|  By
Tiernan Dolan
Published in the Longford News on 10th November 2004
At first glance, Uganda appears to have made great strides in development
in recent years. However, on closer examination, there is a hidden
side to this country to which the vast majority of the international
community has turned a blind eye for 18 years.
In Northern Uganda a civil war of unimaginable ferocity has raged
unchecked and largely unreported for almost 20 years.
According to the United Nations, 20,000 children have been abducted.
Many have suffered unspeakable torture and have been used as sex
slaves for the rebels, with others forced to fight under the rebel
leader Joseph Kony. Along with his followers, the Lord’s Resistance
Army (LRA), Kony’s aim is to overthrow the government in Uganda
and then rule the country by the Ten Commandments.
To date, more than 1.6 million people have been displaced. Their
homes have been looted and burned, their possessions stolen, their
cattle slaughtered and their children abducted, raped and tortured.
Kalongo is one and a half hours north of Entebee by air. While
Entebee is an ordinary international airport, there is nothing ordinary
about Kalongo.
A town of 10,000 known for its mission hospital, it nestles under
the face of Kalongo mountain. It towers over huts and make-shift
shelters, its shadow covering the shanty dwellings like a protective
cloth.
Because of the ongoing conflict and heavy loss of civilian life,
Kalongo’s population has swollen to 38,000. People pour in
looking for protection. They arrive with the clothes on their back.
Everything else has been taken from them.
Initially, people slept outside, all round the hospital. The scenes
were pathetic as young children dressed in rags huddled together
in the intense night cold, often enduring heavy tropical rain. Until
GOAL intervened, food was scarce and help almost non-existent, with
malnutrition becoming a growing problem.
Since July 2003 GOAL has based a project team in Kalongo addressing
nutrition, public health and water and sanitation needs, as well
as working in the children’s wards of the hospital. GOAL has
also set up ante-natal clinics and programmes which focus on HIV/AIDS
awareness, prevention, care and support.
Walking around, I experienced poverty at its absolute edge. The
mud and brick huts are crowded together on the slopes of the mountain
with hardly enough room to pass in between them. Pigs, dogs and
ragged children vie for what little space there is.
Those children that are wearing clothes have only torn and filthy
rags but most are wearing nothing at all. One child wore a t-shirt
with the slogan: “Let’s build a snowman”, another
dressed in a clown’s outfit but with nothing to laugh at.
Their bellies bulge but not from food. Some gnaw at sugar cane stalks,
their sad little eyes covered in mucus, their noses continually
running. These are children whose youth has been savagely stolen
and who are forgotten by the world at large.
Outside one particularly small hut in the hills, four young children
in torn rags clamber from rock to rock. When I stop to photograph
them, an elderly toothless lady, with weather-beaten, leather-like
skin emerges. If there was a representative of the poorest of the
poor she was it. Her husband was dead, her daughter, whose husband
died recently, was having her fifth child in the hospital. She invited
me into her hut, but not for tea. It was to show me that she had
absolutely no food left.
These displaced people fled to the side of the mountain with nothing
and upon arrival, had no shelter, water or sanitation. GOAL has
built latrines, which improve sanitation, preventing the spread
of diseases such as cholera.
Although there are a few water holes on the side of the mountain,
they quickly became filthy and unusable as more and more people
fled to the camp. GOAL began building wells to provide clean drinking
water and so far, 24 wells have been constructed. Water cans have
been distributed for carrying water.
In addition to working on water and sanitation, GOAL runs a community-based
health education programme. Everywhere I went the elders and representatives
praised GOAL’s work. As one elderly man pointed out, without
GOAL, they wouldn’t exist.
Back in the hospital, GOAL nurse Mara Berkely-Mathews finishes
her rounds. The children under her care are lucky. They are looked
after as if they were her own and it shows in their recovery. In
the therapeutic feeding centre Mara checks the progress of the severely
malnourished children, who, despite their obvious feebleness, manage
a tiny smile. A smile or a kind face can bridge any language barrier
and these children seem to know that she is here for them. Mara,
an experienced intensive care nurse based in London, is a million
light years away from her previous hi-tech surroundings but totally
at home with the children of Kalongo.
Every day, the GOAL team are busier. There is always something
else to be done. The supplementary feeding centre has to be checked,
a baby with HIV and TB has to be assessed and a refuse collection
must be set up. So much to do, so little time.
As night fell one of the most magnificent GOAL projects came to
light. Lines of people filled the dusty roadways into Kalongo to
spend the night in GOAL-constructed shelters. Outside these shelters,
the children are soft targets for the LRA rebels. Inside they feel
safe. In all, about four thousand find refuge in this way. In the
morning they leave again, happy to have survived another night.
Just before I left this remarkable place, I strolled a little outside
the hospital towards a well where a group of children were gathered.
Just behind a school building and under the shade of some trees,
stood a Ugandan army tank, its gun pointing out into the bush where
the rebels hid. It was the thin and fragile line between death,
violence and war on one hand and life, innocence and hope on the
other. That line looked so incredibly fragile and shows that Kalongo
and its new population of displaced people are indeed a people under
siege.
It is a war forgotten by all but a few and thankfully GOAL is among
the few who have not forgotten.
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